Working with SSL Certificates With Zero Knowledge

As far the story is going on, serious websites will require HTTPS for serious ranking. Here is guide for working with SSL Certificates starting from zero. Usually, most readers of this website took the HTTPS or SSL/TLS related guides quite lightly. Most thought that HTTPS is only for business websites. In strict sense, a website, which is basically a serious blog and uses AdSense is a business (as we pay Income Tax), they need to rank better on SERP. This forcing for HTTPS by Google is for three assumed reasons – for getting rid of NSA Spyware Activities / PRISM related black label which made their brand reputation to sink to some extent; secondly, the number of spammy, made for adsense (MFA) websites are increasing hugely in number and most methods used to determine SERP basically were biased, which is detrimental for implementing any algorithm with machine learning; thirdly, Google practically accepted the fact – authorship is not enough to determine who is writing, for the sake of real identification, good SSL Certificates becoming a mandatory point. The common point is not mentioned – increased security and privacy. Frankly, one can not use a good SSL certificate and optimize to current standard while on a Shared Hosting. Not to forget, the performance of servers should be so fast that, SSL Negotiation Time will not hamper page loading speed. Last important is – Google PageSpeed score which has been modified a bit now. Despite higher score on WebPageTest, score can be pathetic on Google PageSpeed. Cache Plugins make the way of getting better score on Google PageSpeed almost impossible – reason is CSS files. Mass used methods will not give better result anymore. Websites with good content will not suffer, in fact; most who has implemented SSL, their rank is going better. Debugging with Chrome and other browsers is not on day’s work. CORS will block cheating method of implementing SSL faster – Google will not get any advantage if web hosting companies’ guides comes higher on SERP. They practically need blogs with AdSense and good content to come up higher. This set is basically an almost fool proof set of strategies taken by Google. This guide on working with SSL certificates with zero knowledge assumes, you are working from a running non-HTTPS WordPress website running on Apache.

 

Working with SSL Certificates With Zero Knowledge : First Replicate The Website on Nginx

 

Nginx will decrease the hunger of resource plus, website will load faster by default. If properly configured, there will no difference in total seconds to load the webpage on Apache, non-HTTPS will be closer or even higher than webpage on Nginx, with HTTPS. Technically this is the first point to start with. We are assuming the user will either use Rackspace or Amazon. We can not give warranty whether all tweaks will work in the same fashion on other web hosts. So, mirroring the site with IP address only and testing with 301 redirection is the first work. We have :

 

1. WordPress Nginx php5 fpm Installation Video Guide for Rackspace Cloud
2. Optimizing Nginx PHP5-FPM WordPress Configuration
3. Optimizing Nginx (nginx.conf) on Cloud Server
4. We are not considering my.cnf optimization as a part of this immense upgrade

 

So, you are using W3 Total Cache for WordPress with WordPress SEO – most commonly used combination. So you need to understand :

 

1. What is CORS
2. W3 Total Cache With SSL for Nginx Server
3. WordPress SSL Lock Not Showing

 

Working with SSL Certificates With Zero Knowledge : Now, Only The SSL Part

 

Before you need to read the guide Plugins and Snippets for WordPress HTTPS Setup or the last step – SSL Grade Optimization Tweak, you need to get the SSL certificate first! So :

 

1. Generate CSR File for SSL Certificate Request on Mac OS X, obviously you can do it on Linux too. Essentially, the commands will remain the same.

2. You might require to convert format to .pem
3. You need to understand – Which SSL Certificate You Need
4. For making HTTPS Working fine you need to Configure Ngnix Server For Serving HTTPS URLs

There are more problems, which you will face in real life. Now a working example, B Grade host DigitalOcean (which made HostGator pushed to C Grade Webhost) are paying writers to copy guides :

You can see, their rank on SSL Grade at the time of writing is lower :

They are using SHA1. To score A+, SHA256 is required. You can see, SSLABS clearly written :

Forget about other parameters. All these difficulties are to added to smash the monopolistic business. One business might have guides for their users, but they can easily use the fair policies.